218 



MOUNT ATHOS. 



rupt. Those who now aspire to literary attainments among them 

 learn ancient Greek, esteeming their mother tongue not worthy of 

 cultivation ; and they assured me that all the Servic manuscripts in 

 Mount Athos were translations from the Greek fathers. 



From Zografou we proceeded to the last great convent of Mount 

 Athos, called Chiliantari, containing about one hundred and eighty 

 monks. This also is inhabited by Bulgarians ; and its manuscripts 

 are all in the Servic dialect except a few liturgies in Greek. The 

 present Abbot is Gerasimos, nearly eighty years old, sixty-eight of 

 which he has passed in the monastery. From him I obtained much 

 information concerning the state of the religious community of 

 Athos. He professed to know little of the early history of the 

 convents ; but seemed to think that many of them laid claim to a 

 higher antiquity than they ought, when they referred to Constantine 

 the Great, Arcadius and Honorius, and other early Emperors as 

 their founders ; for no records in any of the monasteries are of a 

 date prior to Nicephorus Phocas, who reigned in the year 961. When 

 the crafty caloyers adverted to the progress of the Turkish arms 

 unHer the Sultan Orchan and his immediate successors, and con- 

 jectured what might soon be the fate of Constantinople itself, they 

 sent a deputation to the Sultan at Brusa in Asia Minor, carrying a 

 present of fourteen thousand sequins, and begging that when his 

 victorious arms had taken possession of the seat of the Greek 

 empire, the caloyers might be left in the full enjoyment of their 

 religious privileges, and in the exclusive possession of Mount Athos. 

 The Turk accepted the bribe, promised all they wished, and gave 

 them a charter, which is said to be still preserved among the 

 archives at Chariess, the metropolis of the peninsula. The Turkish 

 Sultans, however, have since made this faithless body pay dearly for 

 their treachery to their own Ciiristian monarch, by throwing so large 

 a sum of money into the hands of the enemy of their religion and 

 their country at so critical a moment ; and instead of being for ever 

 exempted from tribute as they had expected, they now pay annually 



